


Midori No Me

by FridaysAt9



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Creepy, F/M, Fluff, Hilarity Ensues, Old Married Couple, Post-Episode: s11e03 Plus One, Retirement, The X-Files Revival, Undercover, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27655790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FridaysAt9/pseuds/FridaysAt9
Summary: When several couples go missing from a 55+ community in Florida, Mulder and Scully are once again assigned as an undercover married couple tasked with solving the case. Mulder can’t wait to play house as a retiree, but because of the nature of their relationship at its current state, Scully isn’t so sure. Set post Plus One.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 44
Kudos: 51
Collections: X-Files Case File Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DancesWithCybermen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancesWithCybermen/gifts).



> For DancesWithCybermen for the X-Files Case File Exchange
> 
> My Prompt was:  
> S11, anytime after Plus 1. Mulder & Scully go undercover as a married couple to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances in a 55+ community. Hilarity & paranormal happenings ensue.
> 
> Teresa, you asked for humor and banter and a look at that developing relationship, and I hope I delivered! I loooooved writing this prompt! This is the longest fic I've ever written, so thanks for such a great prompt for my first case fic!
> 
> Thank you to my fantastic betas, ErosandEris, AnnieAmi and ATTHS_TWICE. You guys made the story so much better!

Bella Terra, An Active Senior Community  
Winter Haven, Florida

“Do you know what happened to the Tobins?” Denise asked, turning her head and glaring into the sunlight to watch her husband playing shuffleboard with the other husbands. It was the perfect day to sit outside the clubhouse, sipping sweet tea and gossiping with her girlfriends.

“I think they moved closer to their kids,” Maureen said, with a hint of question in her voice before taking another sip of her tea. 

“And what about the Perrys?” Denise asked, absentmindedly, still watching the men. “Did they move closer to family too?”

“The last time I talked to Linda she didn’t say anything,” Madeline said about the Perrys, “but they are all moved out. So I guess she didn’t want to talk about it, for whatever reason.”

Denise turned her attention back to her friends, shaking her head. “It’s too bad.”

The women moved on to other topics, the Broadway show that was coming to town and Beth’s husband who continued to leave socks all around the house, but Denise noticed that one of the women, Amy, wasn’t a part of any of it. She seemed deep in thought, wringing her hands and looking nervously around the clubhouse patio. 

“Amy,” Denise said, interrupting the other women’s chatter. “Is everything ok?”

“Hmm?” she asked after a beat, realizing someone was speaking to her. “What? Yes. Sorry. I’m fine. I just have a little bit of a headache.”

The other women looked at her with varying levels of concern.

“I’m going to head home,” Amy said, standing up and collecting her things “I’ll see you tomorrow? At book club?”

The women all nodded and said their goodbyes. Denise offered a smile and watched her walk off. 

~~~~

The Richardson’s House  
7pm

Scott Richardson sat in his reclining chair with a glass of scotch resting on his belly. This was his after-dinner routine. He would sit in his chair and sip his vintage, and very expensive scotch while watching British mysteries on BBC. Sometimes Amy would join him, other times she would fret around the house, cleaning and straightening. Tonight she did the latter. 

Amy was a wreck of nerves. All through dinner, she tried not to let her husband see, but every sound in the house, every loud breeze outside made her jump. She was on edge. She was scrubbing the dishes furiously in an attempt to keep busy, calm herself, but it wasn’t working. She was down to the last mug and she still felt just as tightly wound. 

The phone on the kitchen wall rang suddenly, causing Amy to drop the mug with a loud clank. 

“Jesus, Amy,” she heard her husband mutter from the other room as she grabbed the phone off the wall and put it to her ear. 

Scott looked over his shoulder and could see the long yellow phone cord stretched past the doorway from the wall to the sink. He rolled his eyes. That woman spent half her day on the phone. 

He turned back to the TV, but Amy’s conversation was loud enough that it was cutting into his show. He turned up the volume with an irritated sigh. 

“But I didn’t…. No, but… You know me…”

Scott went to turn up the volume further, but heard Amy’s voice take on a more distressed tone. He considered going to see if she was okay, but decided against it. Probably just women’s nonsense. 

As he reached for the remote, he felt the hair on the back of his head tousle as if it had been blown. “Amy, did you turn on the fan?” he yelled.

“No… Please!” Amy said into the phone, now sounding desperate. “I didn’t… No…”

Without an answer from his wife, Scott looked around the room, noting nothing was out of the ordinary. He didn’t hear a fan, but there was definitely a breeze going through the house. And it seemed to be picking up. 

“What in the…” Scott stood from his chair, “Amy! Did you open a window?” He was now yelling to be heard over the noise. 

The wind was whipping around the house, spiraling through the rooms, lifting everything off the ground. It was like their house was filled with an indoor cyclone. Amy continued yelling into the phone as nearly all other sound was cut out by the howling of the wind. The lights went out, throwing them into darkness. Scott fought his way towards the kitchen, barely able to keep his feet on the ground. 

“Amy!”

Amy let out a scream louder than anything Scott had ever heard in his life. He closed his eyes as the scream and the wind pierced his mind until everything stopped. 

The wind died down and the phone clattered to the kitchen tile, hanging from its cord. 

Amy and Scott were gone.


	2. Chapter 2

J. Edgar Hoover Building  
Consignment Depot

“I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” Scully said while going through a rack of some of the worst looking clothing she had ever laid eyes on.

“Why not?” Mulder asked. “I think it’s perfectly fitting that we were fake married, then real married, we got old, and now we get to be fake old married. It’s the natural course of life.”

Earlier that morning, Skinner had called them to his office with a case he wanted them to investigate. A couple had gone missing from a retirement community in Florida and there were rumors that other couples, who had officially moved out, had actually gone missing as well. According to Skinner, the manager of the community was somewhat less than forthcoming, saying that there was nothing unusual about the couples who had chosen to leave the community. The most recent couple, the Richardsons, had reached the interest of the FBI however, because their children were unaware of any plans for relocation and were unable to find them. 

Without the community management providing adequate assistance in locating the Richardsons, Skinner had turned to the best agents available to investigate the unexplained. They were the right age and their unique relationship, with its twenty plus years of chemistry, made them ideal for what the job would require. They would be going undercover, as a married couple, in a 55+ community, to get to the bottom of what was happening to these couples. 

Scully wasn’t happy about it. 

She had just gotten comfortable with her current arrangement working with Mulder. When they first came back to the FBI, it felt like they were constantly running, jumping from one case to the next without much downtime in between to really process what was happening. They had been chased, or there were monsters they needed to find, or she was in a hospital having visions of a global pandemic. There hadn’t been much time to stop and think about what was happening, or what was changing between them. 

There was an underlying tension because of the time they had spent apart and everything that had led to that separation, but they had spent so many of their years together with that push and pull just below the surface, that it actually felt more genuinely them than if everything had been completely smooth and amicable. Now, when she looked at him, deep in thought, or when she woke up on a plane, realizing her head had accidentally drifted to his shoulder, she felt the same longing she had all those years ago when she was young and he was just her smart and undeniably attractive partner who was supposed to remain strictly off limits. 

Up until recently, they had kept their feelings locked up tight, other than the off-handed sarcastic, flirtatious, or biting remarks that harkened back to their past. But then he had looked at her the way he did, offering himself to her just on the other side of a motel door, and she wasn’t strong enough to fight the pull of the person who had always been her other half. For so many years, he had been her source of comfort, so when she had found herself on edge, in a near panicked state, she couldn’t stop her feet from walking towards him. He was her air when she was unable to catch her breath.

What they hadn’t done, because it was them and this is what they did, was talk about what was happening between them. They had slept together, were spending most of their time together, but were they back together? Were they just having fun? Scully had no idea because they were just moving forward, living in the moment, afraid to talk about what it all meant. 

Which was why she felt unsure about how this case would play out. They had lived a domestic life, once. Coming home to each other, sharing household chores and responsibilities, but the past few weeks, as close as they had gotten, hadn’t included any of that. It had felt more like the stage in a relationship, were this a normal relationship, right before someone took the next step and asked the other to move in. Thanks to this case, that decision had been seemingly thrust upon them, at least in the short term, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it. Worse, as she watched Mulder’s excitement, picking out frumpy Hawaiian shirts and god awful visors, she could see that he was. 

“I’m too young for this,” Scully groaned, trying to decide what her style would be if she lived in an “active living” retirement community.

“Sixteen months Scully,” Mulder called from a different aisle. “Sixteen months until the big 5-5.”

“But really Mulder,” she said, pulling a pink cardigan over her starched white blouse. He could hide behind humor, but age had been on her mind a lot lately. In a lot of ways, she felt like she was past her prime, while in others she was feeling better than ever. “We are working for the FBI. Just recently we were running through the woods handcuffed together, we’ve fought people who were shooting at us. I run every day, and I know how much you’ve been swimming. We might be in the best shape of our lives, actually. I couldn’t possibly feel further removed from a retirement community than I do at this exact moment.”

She stepped out from behind the clothing rack, sweater fastened shut except for the top and bottom buttons, a string of pearls around her neck and her hair pulled together in a bun at the base of her neck looking completely unlike herself. She only occasionally allowed herself to think about a near future where maybe they might live together again, and now she was preparing to masquerade as a long-married couple ready to retire together. 

“Can you even imagine retiring like this, Mulder? Living with other people of… a mature age? Taking bus trips to the grocery store?”

“I don’t know Scully. Maybe,” Mulder said as he stood in front of her and placed a pair of chunky black glasses on his face, inspecting her look. “You’ve just aged about ten years.”

Scully rolled her eyes and gave him a playful shove on the shoulder. 

“Skinner thinks this is the best way for us to get information, since the community management has been of little use,” Mulder said, collecting as many brightly colored polo shirts as his arms could hold. “No one knows what happened to these couples and the agents who ran interviews at Bella Terra are at a dead end.”

“And how is this an X-file exactly, Mulder?” Scully asked.

“I’m not sure if it is, but they think we will be able to find something that may have been missed,” he continued. Scully turned down another aisle to look for more things she didn’t want to wear. “Plus we’ve gone undercover before, so this should be old hat for us.” 

Scully poked her head around the corner to show him her raised eyebrow.

“No pun intended,” he said. “Do you think we’ll need bathing suits?”

Scully watched him trying to decide between a red and a black speedo. Her mouth quirked up in a smile. “I’m partial to the red.”

Mulder wiggled his eyebrows at her in the terrible attempt at being seductive. She was annoyed that it worked. “Look, they even have some for you, with little skirts.”

Scully begrudgingly took the bathing suit, wondering how someone could possibly swim in so much material, and added it to her pile of khaki capri pants and floral print shirts. “So what are your theories, Mulder,” she asked. “You don’t think it’s a trash monster do you?”

“Probably more likely it’s aliens,” he said. Scully just stared at him, unmoving. “Kidding, kidding. I don’t know, Scully, but there is definitely a cover-up happening. The field agents didn’t find any evidence that anything out of the ordinary occurred on their property, but I don’t trust their investigation. Something happened to these couples, and I highly doubt that they are alive and well but mysteriously off the grid. We’re going to have to get into that house and see if there’s anything they missed.” 

Mulder tightened a watch on his wrist, turning it back and forth, catching it in the light. “This couple, the Richardsons, had to go somewhere,” he said, “and from what their kids told the bureau, they don’t sound like the type to just up and disappear without telling their family where they were going. Something feels off.”

“It is possible they decided to move,” Scully said, always willing to play devil’s advocate.

“Without telling their kids?” Mulder asked. He didn’t have to press any further once they locked eyes. If they had had the chance to know William, they would never have left him, let alone disappear without a trace.

Scully looked down at her feet and sighed before turning her attention to the mound of awful clothes they would be wearing over the next few days. “I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

~~~~

Bella Terra  
Winter Haven, Florida

“I’m having some serious déja vu, Scully,” Mulder said as they drove through street after street of well-manicured, identical houses. 

The community was clean and tidy with nothing out of place. The grass was mowed and the landscaping was beautiful. There wasn’t a lawn gnome, plastic flamingo, or weathervane to be seen. It was just like The Falls, but everyone had wrinkles and white hair.

“It’s Marie now,” Scully told him, looking through the new resident information they had picked up at the leasing office. 

“I can’t believe you picked Marie and Pierre Curry.”

“It was my turn,” Scully said, unable to suppress her grin. “Curie would have been too obvious.”

“Do I look like a Pierre to you?”

“Oui. Un peu.”

“Don’t do that to me, Scully,” Mulder threatened. “I don’t want to get all riled up before we meet the neighbors.”

Scully laughed and continued to flip through the pamphlets. “This really is an active community,” she said. “Salsa dancing, pilates. There’s a softball league. And the trips, Mulder. They are going to Rome in the spring. Maybe I judged this place too harshly.”

Mulder turned to look at her quickly before returning his eyes to the road. Her clothes were frumpy and nothing she would ever have chosen for herself, but she was still so beautiful it took his breath away. Most of the time they had known each other, her hair had been short, all business and no fuss, but he loved the times when she let it grow long. In no way did it take away from her strength and power, but instead somehow simultaneously managed to amp up her femininity. 

He couldn’t help but smile. As much as he was enjoying being back on the X-files, and even though there was work to be done and answers to find, if she asked him to pick up and leave DC and the FBI, and move into one of these places, there was no doubt in his mind he would drop everything and make it happen. He hoped she wouldn’t, but he was in his fifties and they had lost too much time already. No quest would pull him away from her this time. 

“Changing our future plans, Scully?” Mulder asked as he turned into a driveway that was completely indistinguishable from all the others. 

She closed the brochures, and Mulder wondered if she had picked up on his choice of words. Our future. The way she shuffled the brochures together, careful not to make eye contact, let him know that she had.

“Not quite yet.”

The moving company the FBI had set up was waiting for them. Scully agreed with Mulder’s déja vu assessment. This was all too familiar. She was instantly transported back to a time where the excitement at the thought of playing house with Mulder was tampered by everything that was unspoken between them, not to mention the lingering threat of Diana Fowley. No amount of undercover pretending had made it possible to forget the image of Mulder entangled with that frustratingly assertive woman. 

Today there was no Diana in the picture, and yet being undercover as husband and wife still felt just as volatile. It could go smoothly, but what if it drew out lingering hurts and resentments? Could they make it through this assignment without having to address what their future would look like now that they seemed to be on the road to reconciliation? She doubted it. 

“Hey Marie,” Mulder called, pulling her from her revery. “I’m going to take a look inside. You want to go talk to the movers?”

“I would love nothing more, Pierre,” she said in what she hoped was the tone of a loving spouse, but probably did little to hide the underlying sarcasm. Mulder winked and aimed his finger at her making a clicking sound, before turning to walk to the front door. 

Scully sighed. Here we go.

~~~~

Mulder unlocked the front door and walked into what he assumed was a cookie cutter house with the same layout as all the others. The door opened into an entry, living room, dining room combo that led to a kitchen with a small den off the side. To the left he found a hallway leading to their bedroom and bath. Honestly, it was pretty nice. Much cleaner and modern than his house back in Virginia. 

Mulder walked into the bedroom, noting that it had an en suite with a large shower as well as a soaker jacuzzi tub. The elderly sure knew how to do it right. He tried to keep his head in the right place, but flashes of a million activities, all of them involving a particular red-haired FBI agent, shot through his mind in rapid fire. 

“Later.”

He walked back to the kitchen where he found a welcome packet and a stack of takeout menus waiting for him. 

“This place thinks of everything,” he mumbled to himself, picking up the month’s activity calendar. Now, what should he choose?

~~~~

Scully talked to the movers and explained the labeling system on their boxes, as explained to her by the agent who had coordinated the move, so they knew where to place everything in the house. While reminding them to please be careful with the dishes, she noticed a man across the street staring her way. He looked to be somewhere in his seventies, but he was surprisingly fit and far too tan. He was wearing a tank top, presumably to show off his biceps, and was walking an impossibly small dog on a pink leash. 

The man’s leer was persistent and uncomfortable, making Scully feel sweaty and disgusted. And then he winked. Trying not to vomit, Scully gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned on her heel to go find Mulder. 

“Mulder,” she called as she walked into the house. “I think I just got hit on by a too tan, seventy-year-old bodybuilder.”

She found him in the kitchen finishing a call and hanging up his cell phone. Even in his pink polo shirt and frumpy golf shoes, he was still so sexy. “That’s my girl,” he said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Your beauty is ageless.”

Scully rolled her eyes. “Who were you talking to?”

“I signed us up for water aerobics tomorrow at 8am,” he said, with his nose now buried in a Chinese menu. The movers were still coming in and out, making a racket and the house felt stale, hot and clammy. It was taking every ounce of strength she had to keep it together. 

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“Research, Scully,” he said, peering over the menu. “Gotta meet the locals.”

He looked happy. Too happy. “You’re enjoying this too much,” she said. 

He put down the menu and walked over to her, sliding his hands along her waist and under her ugly floral shirt. “Come on Scully,” he said in a voice he knew drove her crazy. “I thought you liked playing house.”

“It’s Marie,” she told him, enjoying his touch and taking a deep breath. “Promise me we will never live in one of these places.”

Mulder pulled her into a hug and ran his hands up and down her back, knowing just what she needed to erase the tension she was feeling.

“What’s not to love?” he asked her. “They mow your lawn for you and everyone’s asleep at 8pm. No one will hear us, if you know what I mean.”

Scully laughed and slapped him playfully on the ass. “Keep it in your pants, Pierre.”

~~~~

The Griffin House  
Bella Terra  
7pm

“I didn’t know the Richardsons had been planning to move.”

“Maybe they didn’t want us to know,” Denise said. When she had invited her best girl friends over for coffee cake after dinner, she knew the Richardsons were bound to come up. Everyone had liked Amy, and they all felt a little miffed that she would leave without telling any of them.

“She had been acting strangely lately,” Beth chimed in.

“You’re right,” Denise agreed. Something didn’t feel right. She had tried Amy’s cell and left her a message but still hadn’t heard back. “She missed the last two chair yogas. She loves chair yoga.”

“So they just moved all their stuff out?” Beth asked. “Overnight?”

“I saw a moving truck leaving the front gate last week,” Madeline said, twisting her long black hair around her finger. 

“Maybe we should call their kids,” Denise said. “See where they are. They had two, right? Maybe they could give us a forwarding address.”

“Oh, Denise,” Madeline said, sounding bored with the conversation and ready to move to another topic. “Just let them be. If they want to contact us, they will.”

Madeline was probably right, but Denise couldn’t fight the nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. This just didn’t seem like Amy at all.


	3. Chapter 3

The Curry House  
Bella Terra  
7:30am

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Come on, Scully,” Mulder said, pulling up his shorts. They were white and matched his silky white polo shirt. He looked exactly like a grandpa who was ready to kick a soccer ball around with his grandkids. It wasn’t typical attire for him, but then again, he didn’t really mind it either. Maybe retirement did suit him.

“You know I love to see you in a bathing suit,” Mulder said, walking into the closet to find Scully staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror, “but that thing is a tent.”

Marie’s bathing suit of choice was basically a dress. He assumed there must have been some sort of bottom to it, but the dress was so long he honestly couldn’t tell. It was mostly black, but had a large white and teal floral print in the center. He had noticed that Scully had looked a little thinner lately and in this suit, she looked smaller than ever. He knew she had been worrying about her age recently, but even in a granny bathing suit she looked young and alive. 

“Why do women add more clothes as they get older,” she asked, “and men wear less and less?”

“Are you thinking about my Speedo?”

Scully turned to face him, sticking out her finger and pulling the waist of his shorts towards her before peering inside. He had taken her advice and gone with the red. 

“But I’ve always worn these,” he said, watching her look. “No one swims laps in board shorts.”

Scully rolled her eyes and let go of his shorts. 

Things were still new and unsure between them, so he defaulted to her, followed her lead. Where their relationship currently stood, he wanted to wait for her to take the first steps, show her interest, before he took anything further than she was comfortable with. But she was flirty today and he could sense she wouldn’t mind a little closeness. 

“Hey, come here,” he said, pulling her towards him and burying his nose in the crook of her neck, peppering it with kisses. “I do like your black bikini better, but you know you would look sexy in a potato sack.”

Scully hummed her approval as he continued to kiss along her collar bone, sounding like his old Scully. Not old in age, but in the sense of familiarity and history.

“What time does that water aerobics class start again?” she asked, running her hands along his chest. 

“8:00.”

“So we have ten minutes?” she asked. 

Mulder quirked an eyebrow. “Bring it on, G-woman.”

~~~~  
Bella Terra pool  
8:30am

“To the right! Two! Three! Four! Now your left! Two! Three! Four! Bring it to the front! Two! Three! Aaaaand your arms! Two! Three! Four!”

Scully had never felt less coordinated in her life. She liked to think of herself as athletic. She rarely went to the gym, but she kept a running routine and did fitness videos in front of her TV when she had the time, but this? This was a whole different ball game. 

She could swim, and had even been on a swim team when she was a kid living in San Diego, but this combination of dancing, walking, and following the directions of an overexcited instructor was somehow pointing out every skill she was lacking. 

Mulder, on the other hand, with all his lanky enormousness, was as graceful as a synchronised swimmer. He had rhythm and seemed to anticipate the next move without the slightest bit of effort. Add to that the goofy grin he had plastered on his face and Scully wanted to murder him. Especially when she ventured slightly too far to her right towards the dip in the pool’s floor that kept causing her to slip and submerge herself. 

In short, she was a drowned rat who would never star on broadway. 

“Come on Marie,” Mulder called to her while his arms moved over his head in jumping-jack form. “It’s The Boss!”

He turned to the woman next to him who was wearing, amazingly, a fifties-style bathing cap. “My wife loves Springsteen. We saw him one time on a summer trip to Jersey.”

Jesus, he could even hold a conversation while doing this and Scully could barely catch her breath. 

Mulder was one of only two men in the pool, the other being fifteen to twenty years his senior, but that didn’t seem to deter his enthusiasm. And by the swooning looks on the faces of the women in the class, he had quickly become the star. 

Bella Terra had a beautiful outdoor pool with all the typical Florida features, palm trees, sunshine and an attached hot tub, but the water aerobics classes took place in the community’s indoor fitness center. On the way in, Scully had checked the posted schedule, noting open swimming times as well as a daily “water walking club.” Water aerobics was scheduled for three days a week and she sincerely hoped Mulder wasn’t planning on making this a routine. 

The room was hot and humid and Scully felt like she was just as equally covered in sweat as she was in pool water. The clock on the wall said they had been at it for 30 minutes, but she was sure it had been at least four hours. 

Just 15 minutes to go.

“OK!” the instructor shouted and clapped her hands. Of course she was still full of energy. She was nice and dry, standing on the pool deck. “Let’s cool down with some calming floating!”

Without even looking at Mulder, Scully could feel him tense up. Finally, the tables had turned. As much as he swam, Mulder sank like a cannonball if tasked with floating on his back. Scully on the other hand, was a buoyant as an otter eating a meal on its belly. 

The class spread out to give each other space, and Scully gently pushed off the bottom and let herself go weightless. All the anxiety of the past thirty minutes was gone, sinking into the water, leaving her instantly at peace, left alone with the sound of her own breathing. That is until she noticed the splashes, ripples, and tiny waves coming from her right. 

Her ears were below the surface, but even so, the slaps against the water and Mulder’s muffled grunts made their way to her. She didn’t need to see him to know what he looked like. Long ago she had tried to teach him to float while they vacationed in the Bahamas. After a day of hiking and love making, she wanted to show him some calm, some stillness. She had held her arms under his back, like a mother would with her child, and instructed him to put his arms out and imagine pushing his pelvis up towards the sky, only to watch him sink like a stone the second her arms were gone. 

He never did manage to successfully float, giving up in favor of wrapping his body around hers underwater instead. Mulder was doing no better today, but instead of offering herself up to him, taking him in her arms, pressing her lips against his, she kept her eyes closed and tried to suppress her smile and ignore him. That would be his punishment for being so good at water aerobics.

~~~~

Before class, Scully had chosen a locker that was towards the back of the locker room, hoping it would give her some privacy for changing. As was typical with gyms and spas, especially with those filled with women who had reached an age where they no longer felt insecure about their bodies, there was no hiding from the nudity of a group of strangers.

Scully was a doctor, and of course had no issues with seeing the human body, both male or female, but there was something about watching a group of silver-haired women, walk around naked, free as birds, that was somewhat off-putting to her, especially when she knew she needed to get to know them, and would have to erase the images of their naked bodies from her mind while holding future conversations.

Wrapped in a bright orange towel, she pulled down her bathing suit straps and slid the sopping wet, monstrous thing down around her legs to the floor. As she stepped one leg out, a voice caused her to jump, nearly entangling herself in the wet suit. Thankfully her locker door was sturdy enough to catch her before she fell.

“Oh I’m sorry, hun,” the woman in front of her said. She was small and round around the middle, with legs longer and thinner than her torso. She was also completely naked. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Beth. Beth Lutz.”

She had a slight southern accent and a broad smile. She held out her hand to Scully, who was clutching her towel to her chest and trying to keep her eyes fixed on Beth’s face. 

“Nice to meet you, Beth,” she said, trying to calm her racing heart. “I’m Marie.”

“So that husband of yours is quite the dancer,” she said with a laugh, putting her hands on her hips. Scully fought the urge to turn her back and give Beth privacy since she clearly didn’t require any. 

Scully flashed her a bright smile that felt fake and foreign on her face. “He is something, isn’t he?”

“Where are you folks from?” Beth asked. “It’s always so nice to have new people in the community. And y’all are so young!”

“Well, one of us is young anyway,” Scully said, trying to charm her with a joke, that judging by Beth’s smile was successful. “We are originally from outside of Washington D.C. but we were ready to give up the dreary winters.”

Beth was nodding but didn’t respond, so Scully said, “So we moved to paradise!”

Beth smiled and nodded. “Well you’ve come to the right place!” she said gleefully. “You’ll love Bella Terra and I’m so glad y’all are getting involved!”

“We can thank my husband for that,” Scully said, getting tired of the exchange and desperately wanting to get into her clothes. 

“The girls and I are going to go into town and get a late breakfast, or brunch if you will,” she said. “Would you and your husband like to join us? We’d all love to get to know you both.”

Thankful that water aerobics hadn’t been a complete waste of time, Scully agreed and listened to the directions to Beth’s favorite brunch spot. 

“Alright doll,” Beth said, leaning in towards Scully and wrapping her in a very tight, very naked hug. “We’ll see you there in 30 minutes!”

She needed a shower. 

~~~~ 

There weren’t many times in their relationship where Mulder felt like a husband. He had always seen men carrying their wives’ purses, or waiting for them in stores while they tried on dresses in fitting rooms, and while throughout their partnership there had been many occasions when he had woken her up from a nap in a car or waited for her outside an airport bathroom, he still hadn’t felt like one of those men. They had always felt like equals, but as he sat in a wicker chair outside of the women’s locker room with a handful of other men milling about, he couldn’t help but smile knowing that his “wife” would soon come out to meet him. 

After she left their home, Mulder had gone through his own phases of grief. He had hated her for giving up on him. He had hated himself for ruining what they had. He had longed for her touch, her scent, her voice. Eventually he couldn’t do anything but move forward, but as he worked on himself, taking control of his mental state and resuming an exercise regime, he held onto the hope that one day they would find each other again. They were tied, and he doubted they would ever be able to stay apart forever. As he had told her recently, he would be there, down the road, to push her wheelchair with his own.

Now that their paths had once again crossed and intertwined, he made a decision not to hold back. He was ready to return to where they had been. He knew Scully was concerned and wanted to move slowly, but all he needed was a word from her and he would be back in it, one hundred percent. She was his past, and he needed her to be his future. 

A soft giggle drew Mulder’s attention to his left where a small collection of treadmills, bikes, and elliptical machines were set up. A woman in coordinated workout attire stood leaning against one of the treadmills looking delighted to be talking with the very tan man standing in front of her. 

Mulder couldn’t make out more of their conversation than the woman’s name, Denise, and a handful of hums and additional giggles. Despite this man’s unnatural hue and cocky attitude that Mulder could see from a distance, this Denise woman was shamelessly flirting with him, placing her hand on his bicep as she laughed at something he said. There was much more life to these retirees than he had ever expected.

Scully’s sudden hand on his shoulder made him jump.

“Losing your edge, Pierre,” she asked, with a smirk.

“I was just watching the love birds,” he said, gesturing towards the treadmills. “These two are flirting like teenagers.”

Scully made a face and said something that sounded like “creepy” under her breath, just as the man turned to face them. He gave Scully a wink before returning his gaze back to the other woman. 

“Well, well, well,” Mulder said. “I told you you’ve still got it.”

“Shut up, Mulder.”

“Pierre.”

Scully shot him a death stare and said, “We’ve been invited to brunch by some of the women from class who were quite taken by your performance.”

“As most women are.”

Before she had a chance to refute his claim, a group of women came out of the locker room, drawing the attention, Mulder noticed, of the flirting couple. The man gave Denise’s hand a squeeze, and quickly walked away. Denise, who just moments before had been so confident in her advances towards him, looked almost nervous as she tucked her head down and stepped onto the treadmill, frantically pushing buttons.

“Did you see that, Marie?” Mulder asked, turning to Scully, but she was talking with the group of women, who he now realized must have been the ones who had extended the brunch date. They were smiling and pointing, seeming to be giving directions, all but one. One woman, with very straight posture and long black hair, was also watching Denise. She did not look happy.


	4. Chapter 4

Mulder prided himself on his ability to read people. He had been at the top of his class at Oxford and while he had earned himself the nickname of Spooky early on in his time at the FBI, he was always respected for his profiling skills. Typically he was able to view a situation from all angles, noticing small seemingly unnecessary details that allowed him to pick up on things that other people had missed. 

But with these women it was taking every ounce of brain power he had to merely follow along with the conversation. He slid a glance at Scully to see if she was doing any better, but he found his partner looking somewhere between completely bewildered, horribly bored, and ready to pull her weapon. 

“So I used the coupon and there was a sale, so I paid twenty-five cents for the whole bottle!” one of the women said. 

“Amazing,” one woman said.

“Remember Joanne?” another asked. “She took a pilates class with a woman who told her about a friend of hers who was selling these leggings online. My daughter and her friends are wearing them. I got a pair with cats on them and they were on sale too!”

“Oh I love Joanne,” another said. “But honey, I am not putting these hips in leggings.” 

Mulder felt like he had been sucked into some sort of vortex of clothing, cooking, and deals that was increasing in speed, swirling around causing him to forget everyone’s names, including his own, not to mention the reason he was at this god forsaken restaurant eating an omelet that tasted no different than his glass of water. 

Scully cleared her throat in that way that she did, causing all talking to come to a stunning halt. All eyes turned to her, and to her credit, she pulled off a look of innocence that probably everyone at the table believed. Well, except for Mulder of course. 

“So how long have you all lived here?” Scully asked, taking advantage of the break in the inane chatter. Right. Case. Missing people. The fog of coupons and leggings cleared as Mulder gave Scully an appreciative smile. 

“Well, Madeline and Gene have been here the longest,” one of the women said. Mulder thought her name was Beth.

“Ten years,” said a woman with long black hair, who, now that Mulder was paying attention, remembered was named Madeline.

“I’ve been here for six, and Maureen and her husband Mike are our newest,” Beth continued while a slight woman with unnatural blonde hair raised her hand. “Well until y’all moved in, of course.”

“Well, we’re happy to be here,” Mulder chimed in, taking Scully’s hand for effect. The three women sitting around the table made a mix of approving sounds while Scully grimaced. 

“How did your move in go?” Maureen asked. “All settled?”

“Yes, everything is perfect,” Mulder said. “We were just so happy that there was a unit available. I know how desirable this property is, but it was the one that Marie had her heart set on, and I just can’t resist her charm.”

“There had been a waitlist for about a year,” Scully added, Mulder noticed with a less gushing tone, “but our agent called us and said there were some new units available.”

“So we just grabbed one up and packed our bags,” Mulder finished. He was watching the reactions of the women, and noticed a slight discomfort at the direction the conversation was headed. Wondering if it was due to open units, and the people who once lived in them, Mulder opened his mouth to ask, but Scully beat him to the chase. 

“Have there been some couples relocating lately?” she asked. Beth looked at Madeline in a moment so slight it could have been missed entirely, but Mulder could tell had Scully caught it. Beth seemed to be asking for permission, and there was a definite look of mild fear in her eyes. “I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave this place. It’s so perfect.”

Her tone was sweet and warm and nothing like Scully. It was believable. She had gotten better at this since their last foray at pretending to be married. As if reading his mind, she looked his way and raised one eyebrow. God, he loved her. 

“People come and go sometimes,” Beth said. “You know how it is.”

“As we get older, we tend to want to move closer to our children,” Madeline said in a definitive tone.

“Do you have children?” Mulder asked, feeling like he already knew the answer. 

“No, I don’t,” Madeline told him with unflinching eye contact, “but my husband has three adult children, so I understand the desire to be close to them. Especially if your health is failing.”

“Oh, Madeline,” Maureen said. “Don’t talk like that. We are all perfectly healthy.”

“Tell that to my medicine cabinet,” Beth said with an eye roll and a sip of her sweet tea. Mulder had a feeling her joke was a way to hide her growing discomfort.

“How quickly do the units sell when people decide to move?” Scully asked, not wanting to drop the topic even though it felt like the women had turned to humor to stop this line of questioning. “I have a girlfriend who has been thinking about moving south.”

Mulder watched the women closely and again he saw nervousness. They knew something that they weren’t saying, but Madeline seemed the least bothered. Confidence and assuredness poured out of her. The other women defaulted to her, whether it was because she had lived here the longest, was a natural leader, or it was something else, Mulder wasn’t sure.

“Like you said, Pierre,” she said, looking at him and then to Scully. “They get snapped right up.”

~~~~

Scully flopped into the passenger seat of their FBI issued SUV and let out a sigh she had been holding for the past hour. She didn’t have many friends and had never been much of a ladies-who-lunch type of person. During her time working at the hospital she had gotten close with some of her coworkers, chatting over coffee in the lounge, sharing pictures on their phones. She had even attended one nurse’s wedding, on her own of course, since Mulder had still been in hiding at the time. But even with those connections, she had never allowed herself to go too deep. They were acquaintances at best. 

She wasn’t sure if she was out of practice at making friends or if all her years on the X-files had changed the fabric of her personality, causing her to rely only on herself. And Mulder, at least before she had left. 

So an hour of superfluous conversation about topics for which Scully had very little concern had worn her down. There was definitely something going on that these women knew about and weren’t willing to share, but they hadn’t gleaned enough information to make that meal worthwhile in her opinion. It was mostly gossip and frivolity to which Mulder and Scully had been unfortunate bystanders. What she needed now was a long hot bath, alone, to decompress from all the smiling that being Marie required. 

“They know something, Scully,” Mulder said, starting the ignition.

“Marie,” she responded, in a voice that was mostly a grumble. 

After all these years, Mulder could still read her like a book. He turned onto the highway and placed his large hand on her thigh. His fingers were more wrinkled than they used to be, but how those hands still did things to her. 

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just tired,” she said. “That was excruciating.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” he answered. “When we pick couple friends, I don’t think it should be them.”

Scully chuckled and closed her eyes. “We aren’t getting anywhere on this case, Mulder, and as much as I enjoyed nearly drowning myself at water aerobics this morning, this method of getting to know the locals has yet to provide us much intel. No one has even so much as mentioned the Richardsons.”

“They know something.”

“You said that, Mulder,” she said, briefly opening her eyes to look at him before closing them again. “We know nothing more than we did when we got here. All I can say for sure is that these women enjoy shopping and gossiping. And that Madeline seems to be the leader of the pack.”

“I felt that too,” he said, as the car slowed upon entering Bella Terra. “What I’m trying to figure out is if the other women willingly follow her lead, or if they are afraid of her for some reason. I know you saw how their eyes darted to her with every question you asked.”

Scully hummed in agreement. 

Mulder was quiet, causing Scully to open her eyes and look at him. 

“We need to talk to the property manager,” he said, making her groan. “You can take a bath later, Scully. You know we have to talk to him. We didn’t get enough from our little brunch date. Skinner said the manager hadn’t been much help, but I need to see for myself. If these couples went missing, where did all their stuff go? There had to be a cleanup right?”

Scully sighed. “Fine,” she agreed. “But then I get my bath.”

~~~~

Property Manager’s Office  
Bella Terra

Mulder could tell that Keith Donovan was an inherently nervous man. He was in his late 40s and couldn’t weigh more than 170 lbs soaking wet. His clothes were boring and his glasses were at least three decades out of style, but it was his demeanor that was what really pulled him down. He was sweaty and anxious, hunched over his desk and stuttering over his words. If Mulder had to guess, he would have pegged this man as a math geek with few friends in high school who lived at home with his parents for far too long, and had never had a significant relationship in his adult life. He made a mental note to check his background in the case file after they left. 

Inexplicably, this nervous man was responsible for the care and keeping of an entire community of people 55 and older. It was funny how life worked out sometimes. 

“S-so,” Keith murmured in a volume barely above a whisper, “what can I h-help you two with?”

“I was wondering if it would be possible to have a basketball hoop installed in our driveway,” Mulder said loudly, intentionally in a completely opposite voice from Keith’s. He could feel Scully’s eye roll next to him. 

“Well, Mr…” Keith said and paused, forgetting Mulder’s name. 

“Curry,” Scully supplied, looking bored and giving off an air that Mulder was sure could only make the property manager feel more nervous. 

“Curry, yes,” he said, rifling through papers on his desk to give him something to do. “We don’t allow basketball hoops or any other modifications to our properties. I-I’m sorry.”

Mulder made a dramatic, displeased snapping gesture that, if it were accompanied by a phrase, would have been “aw, rats!”

Scully offered Keith a smile. “I’m sorry about my husband,” she said. “Is he the first one to ask for something like this? I told him it wasn’t allowed but he just had to ask for himself.”

“N-no,” Keith stuttered, clearly either taken or intimidated by the woman in front of him. “People have asked to install pools and novelty mailboxes in the past. I have to turn them down, but I haven’t gotten any complaints. It-It’s no trouble answering your questions though, but I-I’m sorry. I just can’t allow it.”

“We understand,” Scully said, catching Mulder’s attention. Was she… Was she, flirting?

‘While we’re here,” Scully continued. “I was wondering if I could ask you about open units. I have a girlfriend who would love to buy here. Do you know how often units become available?”

She was flirting. And it was working. Keith had turned slightly pink and even more sweaty than he had been at the start of their conversation. He also seemed to be in a trance, unable to break eye contact. Scully smiled. 

“Um,” Keith started, sounding flustered. “They uh, open up every now-now and then… When, when people leave.”

“Have a lot of people been leaving lately?” Scully asked, sounding as if his words were the most interesting thing she had ever heard. Mulder couldn’t help watching the exchange with heat spreading through his body. This side of Scully, one that she very rarely used to her advantage, was an extreme turn on. 

“We.. Uh, we’ve had, yes. There have been some people, who-who, have moved, yes.”

“They didn’t get tired of paradise, did they?” Scully asked. Her voice was higher than usual and it was doing things to Mulder. She turned and gave him a second’s glance, telling him this flirting was not for Keith and the answers to the case alone. She was well aware of what she was doing to her partner. Mulder readjusted himself in his seat.

“They, um…” Keith stammered. “They didn’t want…”

Just then the door to the office opened. Madeline stood in the doorway without an ounce of concern that she may have been interrupting. Mulder watched as Keith went from flustered by Scully’s attention to panicked at being caught, being flustered. 

“The water fountain by the pool is broken again,” she said, looking bored and entitled. “Hi Marie.”

Scully offered her a tight-lipped smile. 

“Oh, Madeline,” Keith said, pulling his gaze away from Scully. “I’m sorry. I-I’ll get it fixed right away. So sorry.”

Mulder watched Keith closely, noting his growing level of anxiety. He had seemed nervous when they walked in, flustered at Scully’s behavior, and positively rattled in Madeline’s presence. 

Madeline simply offered Keith her thanks, gave Mulder a look, and left. 

“She’s really something,” Mulder said.

Keith once again returned to straightening papers and moving things around on his desk. His hands had a slight shake to them and the tips of his ears were tinged in pink.

Mulder looked to Scully who gave him a slight nod. Keith’s behavior was off. 

“I’m sorry about your basketball hoop, Mr. Curry,” he said, sounding suddenly more in charge of himself. “Might I suggest something you can keep in your garage.”

Mulder nodded as Scully watched the man through slightly squinted eyes. 

“I’m sorry, but I have an appointment.”

And with that, they were dismissed.


	5. Chapter 5

Bella Terra  
The Currys’ House

“It’s 5:00! Where’s my dinner, woman?”

“Would you like it in your face, or up your ass?”

Mulder was eating sunflower seeds in the den in an oversized armchair with his feet up on the coffee table. “I like Scully better than Marie.”

Scully poked her head around the corner of the wall to look at his lounging form, the picture of end-of-the-day comfort. “Just get in here and help me,” she chided with a grin. 

It had been a long time since they had spent an evening together like this. Scully had always enjoyed the nights when they cooked together, side by side at the dingy counter in their kitchen. Her cooking skills were far superior to Mulders, but over the years he had become a competent sous chef and her perfect companion. 

When she was on her own she usually resorted to healthy takeout options or salads she made herself. Her meals were no fuss and her nights were quiet. Lonely. 

Tonight she wanted Mulder close to her. She wanted to feel his hand on her back as he brushed past her to get to the sink. She wanted their easy banter and all the things that were familiar and grounding about him, but still there was uncertainty in the back of her mind. As the days and weeks passed, her desire to rebuild their relationship grew, and while she thought that Mulder shared her feelings, she spent her days second guessing herself and overanalyzing everything he said, every conversation they had, every look he gave her. She was afraid to get hurt again and because of that she found herself afraid of giving into her feelings and following her instincts. 

“Feeling better?” Mulder asked, standing far closer to Scully than was entirely necessary. His breath tickled the hairs on the back of her neck. He tapped her toes with his own. They were painted black. She knew he liked them like that, but didn’t want to admit to herself that she had selected the color for this case, specifically. 

“Much,” she answered, alluding to the effects of her bath and the reaction she had to him being so near. 

“So what are you thinking?” Mulder asked, taking a knife and a tomato from Scully’s outstretched hands. She nearly told him about all the thoughts on her mind— the way she was feeling about him, her trepidation at moving forward in a relationship with him, the color of her toenails— but chose instead to remain in the safety of their case. 

“The manager knows something,” she said, while pouring a box of pasta into a pot. “Keith.”

Mulder nodded as he chopped the tomato. Scully remembered a time when she taught him how to not butcher them but rather make fine, even slices. Now he was a pro.

He caught her watching him and smiled, making Scully feel inexplicably nervous. In her fifties and still getting butterflies in her stomach from this man.

“I agree,” Mulder said, “and your… interrogation, almost led to him telling us something.”

She had wondered how long he would make it before bringing that up. It wasn’t the first time she had used a little flirtation to get what she needed, but she only ever used it as a last resort, preferring to get information with her own intelligence rather than by dropping her IQ or flaunting her body. Keith had been too on edge to be as forthcoming as she needed him to be. She sensed that he was lacking in female attention, so she had taken a chance and made him feel important, if not desired, for a moment or two.

Not wanting to give Mulder the satisfaction of rubbing it in, Scully just shrugged, owning her behavior, causing him to chuckle and shake his head in slight disbelief. 

“Unfortunately our friend Madeline spooked him,” Mulder said, seamlessly passing the diced tomatoes on a cutting board to Scully so she could toss them into a skillet with some garlic. “If I had to guess, I’d say Keith has a little more than a thing for that woman.”

“Mulder,” Scully chastised. “As if you’ve ever been any sort of relationship expert.”

He looked worried for about a half a second, possibly trying to decide if he wanted to say what was on his mind before a cocky grin began to crawl across his face. 

“My expertise seemed to work on you,” he said, reaching out to touch her face. He smiled, but there was sadness and uncertainty there as well. “At least at one time.”

Unwilling to dive into the deep end, Scully reached up to clasp his hand and brought it to her lips before turning back to face the stove.

“It’s still practically nothing,” she said, opening a cabinet to search of a colander. “Whether Keith Donovan is romantically interested in Madeline or afraid of her because she can be so intimidating is irrelevant, as it tells us nothing about what happened to the Richardsons and the other couples. We know that the people who live here are aware that something has happened to those couples to make them ‘move out’ suddenly. They seemed to be alternately suspicious, concerned, and nervous, but we don’t have any suspects, or even an inkling as to where these people have gone.”

She could feel Mulder’s eyes on her as she poured the pasta into the colander, leaning back to avoid the steam. 

“I mean really,” she continued, putting the pot back on the stove and shaking the pasta before adding it to the skillet. “Do you even have any theories?”

“There have been many stories throughout history of people disappearing without a trace,” Mulder started, leaning his back against the countertop. “Stories about changelings and fairy kidnappings have been common throughout history in many different cultures, but tend to focus on children.”

He paused in his diatribe, which caused Scully to turn to look at him. “There’s always alien abductions of course,” Mulder said.

Scully’s face caused him to hold his hands up in the air in surrender. “But let’s not go there,” he continued. “Elderly women are often depicted in folklore as crones, women who have lost everything in life and have little to live for, who devour people in one way or another. Children in a gingerbread house, the souls of the young and beautiful. The Russian Baba Yaga would kidnap children and eat them.”

Scully brought their dinner to the table and served herself some pasta, before taking a seat. She watched Mulder do the same as he took a break from his storytelling. There wasn’t an ounce of her that believed that there was any paranormal element involved in this case. Hell, she wasn’t even sure there was a crime committed, but there was something charming about watching Mulder grasp at straws, pulling myths and monsters out of thin air and flinging them at the wall, hoping one would stick.

“I see your face Scully, but why can’t it be something paranormal? Some of these fables are based in true happenings within the culture where they originated. Yama Uma for example, a mountain witch who would lure people to her home where she would consume them is based on the death of elderly people during famine in Japan.”

“But Mulder,” Scully said, “It’s a story. It is a way for people to understand and process traumatic periods in history. There isn’t a Japanese mountain witch luring Florida retirees to their demise.”

“You never know, Scully,” Mulder said, slurping sauce through his pasta. “It could be a dybbuk or some sort of old people siren maybe. Or what about a Futakuchi-onna, a wife monster that grows a second mouth on the back of her head that eats everything in its path?”

Scully let out a sudden laugh, nearly choking on her food. “Mulder! Are you serious? Or are you just trying to maintain your spooky reputation? Because these are not theories, as entertaining as they are.” She watched him stuff his mouth. “How’s your pasta?”

“You know it’s one of my favorites,” he said. Scully hummed in reply, happy that some things never changed. 

They ate in comfortable silence until Mulder stood up and returned with two glasses of wine. He wasn’t usually a wine drinker, so she knew he poured himself a glass for her benefit. So they could share in something together. 

“I don’t know, Scully,” he said, before taking a sip. “Maybe these people just moved, but the residents here are suspicious. They seemed to like you though, and I think you need to keep getting to know them.”

“They like you, Mulder,” Scully pointed out. He had practically enchanted everyone in the community within minutes of meeting them, especially after his antics in the pool. 

Mulder shrugged as if to say, well of course. “Maybe give Beth a call and see what she’s doing tomorrow. Hopefully it’s with our friend Madeline. Something about her sets off alarm bells for me.”

“And what will you do while I am out making friends?”

“I’m going to break into the Richardsons’ house, of course,” he said, making Scully laugh. She stood up and took her plate to the sink. Mulder followed.

“I miss this,” he said, leaning towards her as he put his plate in the sink. His hand was on her hip as he towered over her.

“Mulder…” Scully said, barely above a whisper. 

“We’re good together.”

“Except when we aren’t,” she said out of fear. Fear of what was happening. Fear of what had happened and what could happen. 

“Scully, if being in this community has done nothing else, it has made me realize how fast time is moving,” he said, turning her to face him. “And how much time we have wasted.”

Scully started to protest, but he held up his hand to silence her self-deprecating comments. “We are older now. There’s nothing left to prove. Priorities are different.”

Scully took in a shaky breath, despite wanting nothing more than to feel his lips on her own and to press her body against him to close the distance left between them. 

“What are you saying?” she asked, wanting desperately to understand. She had so much to say and so much to ask, but that had never been their way. So much of what they told each other was never verbalized, but she wanted to hear it. She needed to hear his voice telling her that everything would be ok. 

“I’m saying I’m different. We’re different,” he said, sweeping a strand of hair off the side of her face and tucking it behind her ear. “The darkness has always followed us. Hell, most of the time I sought it out, but it’s not at the center of my life anymore. It’s not my reason for living.”

Scully stood rooted in place with her head tipped up to watch him. She ignored her tired feet, the dishes in the sink, and the ache in her neck, and really looked at him.

“Scully, it’s you. You are the reason.”

“Mulder,” she said in a whisper that held a slight warning in its tone, even though this was exactly what she had always wanted to hear.

He let out a nervous laugh. “Too much. I’m sorry. Old age is making me sentimental.”

“No, Mulder,” she said, shaking her head and taking his face into her hands. “It’s not too much. You are all those things to me too, I just don’t want to rush. I…”

“I know.”

“I’m...” she said, hesitating, trying to decide if she wanted to tell him. “I’m scared.”

“There’s no rush,” he told her, bending so close their lips nearly touched. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Before she had time to think, his lips were on her. He wasn’t soft or gentle, but hungry and full of desire. The full weight of his body pressed into her, shoving her back up against the counter, causing a pain that she didn’t mind. 

His hands were in her hair while hers found their way up the back of his shirt. Their kisses weren’t frantic or forceful. They were slow and sloppy, like they had crossed a desert and were desperate for a drink. 

They were making out like teenagers in the kitchen of a retirement home and the irony of it wasn’t lost on her. The entire situation was bizarre, but they didn’t care. It was so good, neither of them wanted to do anything that might break the spell. They weren’t together, or not officially so, and still had so much to discuss, but right in that moment, their kisses felt like oxygen. 

Mulder’s hands were everywhere. Scully couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so alive and so desired. Every intimate moment with Mulder had been amazing, but this? This felt like coming home; where she was meant to be, where she should have been all along. Which scared the shit out of her. 

“Mulder, wait,” she said, using every ounce of strength she had to resist him. 

He pulled back, nodded his head and dragged the back of his hand subtly across his mouth. “Slower.”

He always knew what she needed. She hoped her eyes told him how amazing the kiss was and how much she still loved him, and from the crooked smile that crept across his face, she was pretty sure he understood. 

“Come on, Scully,” he said, taking her hand, ignoring the mess in the kitchen and leading her towards the bedroom. “Let’s get some rest. We have a big day of girl talk and breaking and entering tomorrow.”

~~~~

Bella Terra  
The Richardsons’ House  
10am

Mulder really felt his age as he tried to climb over the fence into the Richardsons’ former backyard. There had been a time when he felt like a movie FBI agent, practically able to leap over a fence with only the slightest bit of effort, but he was getting on in years and his hips felt like they didn’t want to join the party. It only took a step on the bottom rung to realize he would be feeling this decision tomorrow. 

His feet dropped to the carpet-like sod and he bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, and let out a groan. Jesus, one little climb and he could feel the bile rising in his throat. He regretted the eggs and bacon he gobbled down for breakfast that morning, but Scully had wanted to cook and, of course, he would never turn her down. 

The Richardsons had lived in a house towards the back of Bella Terra. Their backyard bumped up against an easement with a drainage ditch and a few shrubs that eventually led to a cement wall designed to block the sound of the highway beyond it. 

Bella Terra really was an active community, as far as Mulder could tell. At 10am, everyone already seemed to be out exercising or waiting for a bus trip, which made sneaking into a house much easier than it should have been. 

Mulder walked towards the glass sliding door, noting that nothing seemed to be out of place. With a harsh cough for effect, in case anyone was listening, he gave the door handle a yank and it easily popped open. The Richardsons’ house was a mirror image of the one he and Scully were staying in. All rooms and features were in the same locations, just flipped. Again, nothing seemed out of place. Upon first inspection, the house looked like it had been meticulously cleaned. It even had a new house smell, if there was such a thing. 

Mulder closed the door gently behind him, and walked through the empty room towards the kitchen. The carpet looked like it had been meticulously cleaned or replaced. He checked the walls to see if they had been freshly painted but, noticing a few knicks in a corner, it seemed that the owners had just kept their house impeccably clean. He took out his phone, cursing his clumsy fingers as he struggled with his password, and took pictures of the marks just in case they were significant. 

Whoever had cleaned the house did a good job. Someone who wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary would have thought the place was perfect. It was ready for new occupants, but Mulder kept up his search. This was far from his first rodeo. 

He checked the baseboards and window ledges before moving on to the kitchen. The house had an old yellow phone attached to the wall opposite the refrigerator. Amazed at seeing a relic like that for the first time since he sold his mother’s house, he picked up the headset and attempted to bring it to his ear, but the long cord was so twisted, he had to lean his face practically to the wall to make the connection. Hanging the phone back on its base, he fingered the cord, wondering how it could have ended up in such a state, especially when the rest of the house seemed to be so well kept. He took a picture. 

Continuing through the house, Mulder found more gashes in the walls, a dent in the refrigerator, and small collections of what seemed to be dirt and debris in the corners of the kitchen counter tops. It looked almost as if a window had been left open on a particularly windy day. He collected a sample to give to Scully. 

There was no blood, nothing broken, just minor surface damage and a little bit of dirt. After searching the house top to bottom, the only theory he had was that the couple had been completely blown out of sight. 

~~~~

Scully really wished this were a typical case. She could spend her morning in the lab, or she and Mulder could spend hours in a hot car driving down a desolate highway en route to a small town to search for a monster. She could be doing an autopsy on a body that was missing it’s head or had a tail or was covered in scales. Any of that would be better than smiling and chatting with the women of Bella Terra while they tried to teach her how to play mahjong. Because Friday was mahjong day, and “all were welcome to join.”

This morning when Scully had woken up, wrapped in Mulder’s arms, she’d almost forgotten where she was. For a moment, it was ten years earlier and she and Mulder were living together in their ramshackle house, curled up in bed under the fluffy down comforter that she loved and he hated because it caused him to overheat. But as the sleep faded from her mind, she remembered that she was masquerading as a woman who had retired with her husband to a Florida paradise where she could waste her days away floating in a pool and joining the ladies on their outings. 

Mulder, sensing that she was awake, had only pulled her tighter towards him and snuggled in closer. They had managed to keep their clothes on and actually sleep, though she doubted that was what either of them had really wanted, but their conversation the night before and the heated… exchange that had followed had left her feeling unbalanced and as close to hungover as one could get without actually consuming much alcohol. Her stomach rolled, causing her mouth to water as a wave of nausea hit her and quickly dissipated. She had peeled Mulder’s arms off her body and made them both scrambled eggs and bacon, feeling that maybe a normal life of cooking and eating together with her “husband” was feasible for her. 

Now, as she looked at the symbols on the tiles in front of her, she realized she was comfortable with a life with Mulder, but definitely not the life that Pierre and Marie had. 

“Hun, you have to turn your chow face up,” Beth said, reaching over and flipping one of three tiles that sat in front of Scully. “These three.”

Scully had no idea what a chow was. Beth was essentially playing her hand and Scully’s simultaneously considering the amount of input, or lack thereof, that she was supplying, so she just nodded and did as she was told. After breakfast, Scully had called Beth to thank her for the previous day’s brunch invitation. She had planned on doing a little conversational digging to get herself invited to something where she could get a better read on the women in this social circle, but Beth was so friendly, she had barely even had to say hello before she was accepted into the fold. 

The weekly mahjong game took place at Denise’s house. Mahjong, Scully had learned, required four players, but Denise was more than happy to relinquish her spot to Scully while she brought them snacks and played the role of over-excited hostess. Scully didn’t know her well, but it seemed like Denise was going above and beyond to impress women who were supposedly her close friends. Was she like this every week? It was almost as if she was trying to be on her best behavior, and not because it was her natural way of hosting an event, but because something was forcing her to do it. 

Beth checked in with her from time to time, once even telling her to settle down and stop fussing, but the other two women didn’t pay her much attention. They were too busy gossiping about the other women in the community and talking about the most recent episode of The Voice, which was possibly the last show on television that Scully would ever spend time watching. 

“She was so amazing!” Maureen gushed. “I think she’s going to win the whole thing.”

“I will only support my husband Blake Shelton’s team,” Beth said. “Don’t tell Rob.”

The women laughed, all except Madeline, who was silently watching Denise. Or, more accurately, glaring at Denise. 

“Do you like The Voice, Marie?” Maureen asked. Scully watched as Denise made eye contact with Madeline before quickly looking away and darting into the kitchen.

“Marie?” Beth asked again, reminding Scully that she was, in fact, Marie. 

“Hmm?” she said, making a point to act like she had been focused on her tiles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I don’t think I am catching on to this game very well.”

The women laughed and began to share stories about their first experiences with mahjong. Madeline had returned to her normal self, stoic though congenial enough, while Denise remained in the kitchen. Scully continued to smile, but she couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“Beth, can you play for me for a bit?” she asked. “I’m just going to go ask Denise for something to drink.”

Beth simply waved her off with an approving nod and went back to speculating who was more attractive, Blake Shelton or Adam Levine. Maureen laughed and shook her head, but Madeline gave Scully an annoyed look before turning back to her tiles. 

“Denise?” Scully quietly called out as she walked into the kitchen, causing the other woman to jump. “I’m sorry. I was just going to ask you for a drink. And see how you were doing. Are you okay?”

Denise wrung her hands before walking to a cabinet and removing a glass. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, looking the complete opposite of fine. “I just… No, it’s nothing. Lemonade?”

Scully nodded and watched Denise as she poured and handed her a glass. She was on edge and clearly avoiding the other women. 

Scully took a sip of the overly sweet drink and tried not to wince. “They’re a fun group,” Scully said. “Have you all been friends long?” 

Denise shot a glance into the other room. “Some of us for longer than others,” she answered, before adding almost under her breath, “some of us are closer than others.” 

“My girlfriends are the same way,” Scully said with what she hoped was caring and encouraging eye contact. 

“I doubt that,” Denise said. “We aren’t–”

“Marie!” Beth suddenly called from the other room. “You are about to win!”

With that, Denise turned her back and mumbled, “You better go.”

~~~~

Mulder walked into the house to find Scully sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, fingers rubbing her temples.

“Hey there Marie,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Tough day?”

“I don’t like mahjong.”

“That bad?” he asked, taking a seat next to her and instinctively reaching out to rub her shoulders. Scully just looked up at him and locked eyes, telling him everything he needed to know. 

“Any new information that was worth your time with the girls?” He could tell the morning had worn her out. The mental exhaustion that Scully felt as a result of idle chit chat and social interactions that weren’t of her choosing was often more pronounced than the exhaustion she would feel from working out, chasing a suspect, hiking through the woods, and pretty much anything else he could think of. 

“Not much,” Scully admitted, sitting up a little straighter and giving her neck a roll. “Mahjong involves tiles with symbols on them and I guess you have to match said symbols. Also there has to be four players.”

“I meant about the–” Mulder said before realizing she was just messing with him. “Funny. Afternoon Shiner?”

“Sure,” Scully said with a smile as Mulder stood and walked to the fridge. “The women have been friends for varying amounts of time based on when they all moved to Bella Terra. They are not an exclusive group, it seems, as there are other women that switch in and out of their mahjong game and each woman does other activities with some but not all of the group.”

She stopped to take the open beer Mulder offered her and took a sip as he sat back down. “The woman who hosted, Denise, seemed to be on the outs with the group though,” she said. “I had taken her spot in the game, so there was nothing forcing her to stay with the women, but she seemed high strung like she was trying too hard. And the way that she stayed in the kitchen most of the time I was there seemed very purposeful.”

“I know Denise,” Mulder said, earning a double eyebrow raise from Scully. “Nothing to worry about, Marie. You’re the only old retiree I am interested in.”

Scully made a hurt face, causing Mulder to realize he had put his foot in his mouth. It was just recently that she had asked him if he considered her old and now he couldn’t stop making elderly jokes. 

Mulder tipped his head to the side and gave her a look that said, you know I don’t actually mean that, which seemed to satisfy her. “I saw her at the gym while you were getting changed after water aerobics,” he said. “She was with your tan friend, canoodling by the treadmills.”

Scully made a disgusted face and took another sip of her beer. “And then there’s Madeline,” she said and Mulder nodded. “I don’t know what it is about her. She is so cold and unfriendly. The women default to her but also seem a little afraid of her, like she is the mean girl from high school. She acted almost annoyed with Denise especially. I wouldn’t be surprised if Denise’s behavior was just an attempt to alternately impress and avoid her.”

Mulder looked at her with her furrowed brow as she tried to work through her morning. “Do you think it’s anything?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, unconsciously twisting her watch. “It could be something? Or it could just be a rift of some sort between friends.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, finishing their beers, before Scully said, “What about you? I see you didn’t get arrested for breaking and entering. Find anything?”

Mulder lifted himself up slightly from his seat and pulled the evidence bag from his pocket, handing it to Scully. 

“The house was almost perfect,” he told her. “The paint was clean, the carpets were clean. A few knicks here and there, but nothing particularly out of place.”

“So what am I looking at,” Scully asked, holding the bag closer to her face. Mulder knew she didn’t have her glasses because he had taken them last night to reread the case file, and had left them on the nightstand on his side of the bed. “Dirt?”

“Looks like,” he said. “Maybe some crumbs. Hair. I found it in the corners of the kitchen counter and along one piece of molding near their landline phone. Along the same wall.”

“And this is significant how?” Scully asked.

“I don’t know, Scully. I can’t tell you why, but I think it’s wind. All the dirt in the house was blown up against that wall and that wall alone, but maybe the place was so clean to begin with that the cleaning crew didn’t even notice it.”

“Maybe someone left a window open.”

So rational. So Scully. Though she could be right and it was just dirt, but something had to have happened to these people and this little bit of dirt was the only possible evidence they had in this whole lack-of-a-case case. 

“Maybe.”

~~~~

Denise was anxious and worried, pacing her house back and forth. The day’s mahjong game hadn’t felt right with a new player. It seemed like her friends were giving her the cold shoulder. They had barely even noticed that she spent most of the time in the kitchen alone. Except, ironically, for the new player Marie, who had come to check on her. 

She loved her group of friends and didn’t want to do anything that would cause her to lose them, but she had a bad feeling that something was pulling her away from their comfortable rapport. Pulling her against her will. 

Her husband always told her that she worried too much. She made mountains out of mole hills. She thought everyone was out to get her, or no one liked her, or they were talking about her behind her back. Maybe he was right, but she had a funny feeling that someone was mad at her about something. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was off. 

Denise sighed and poured hot water into her tea cup. She would have to let it go and stop worrying or she would never get any sleep. 

The storm was getting stronger and a chill seemed to be seeping into the house. Denise grabbed a blanket and carried her tea to her favorite chair before placing it on the small table next to the book she had been reading. She could hear her husband in the guest bedroom listening to ESPN commentators blabbing on as he did every night, before falling to sleep with his loud snores. She would drink her tea, read a little of her romance novel, and sooth her nerves before heading to bed. 

Just as she sat down and pulled the blanket across her lap, the doorbell rang. It was late, but she figured there was a chance it could be a delivery person or the property manager Keith, who was known to make last minute house calls about issues and concerns on his way home from work. 

Denise sighed, removed the blanket from her lap, and walked towards the door, tea cup in hand. The sports casters were practically screaming from the other room to be heard over the storm. It was still hurricane season, but she didn’t remember hearing about any impending storms when she watched the news that morning. 

Opening the door, Denise let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. 

“Madeline,” she said, smiling at her friend, relieved to feel her worry dissipating. She tried so hard to impress Madeline, but she had never really been able to earn her favor. “I was just thinking about you. Would you like to come in for some tea?”

Madeline stood on the doorstep, unmoving. The smile on Denise’s face fell as the other woman started walking towards her. 

“Madeline…” she said, unsure what was happening, backing slowly into her house as her friend pressed forward.

Madeline crossed the threshold and closed the door. 

Inside there was the sound of a tea cup hitting the floor, followed by the blood curdling scream, ripped from Denise’s lungs.


	6. Chapter 6

The sirens were what pulled them from their slumber. It was Saturday, and while they were playing the role of retirees, Scully still liked her sleep as much as she had when she was in her twenties, and Mulder, thanks to his insomnia, hadn’t actually fallen asleep until after 2am. 

They didn’t seem to be able to sleep without finding themselves curled up in each other’s arms. Every time Scully had woken during the night, she found herself amazed at how perfectly they fit together, as if their bodies remembered how it had been and worked their way back into the familiar position. Then she would start to worry that it was all too much too soon, before eventually relenting and falling back to sleep once again entwined in Mulder’s grasp. 

But now, as the late morning light filtered through the windows, her half awake brain told her something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. 

The shrill blast of a police siren cleared the last bit of fog from her head, making her jolt to a sitting position, somehow barely rousing Mulder at her side. 

“Mulder! Get up,” she said, giving him a nudge. “Something’s happened.”

“Not yet Scully,” he mumbled, trying to pull her back down to the mattress. “Nothing’s happened yet. Just let me wake up a second and—”

“Mulder, no,” she said, stepping out of bed and reaching for the pajama pants she had discarded on the floor. “Sirens. Something’s happened.” 

Mulder’s eyes snapped open as he registered the noise. He jumped out of bed, grabbing his gray sleeveless shirt and started moving like he had been awake for hours, grabbing clothes and rushing towards the bathroom. Scully stood in place and watched him, momentarily distracted by how much she loved him in that gray shirt. 

“Get those little legs moving, Scully,” he yelled to her with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “I think the Currys need to take a walk around the neighborhood.”

~~~~

In an effort to keep their cover, Mulder and Scully maintained a casual yet concerned pace as they followed the sound of the sirens through the neighborhood. Scully could feel Mulder’s nervous tension pulling him to pick up their speed, but she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. Everything he needed to know, a reminder to not be an FBI agent, to stay in character, to remain calm, was expressed in a moment of eye contact. 

Scully wasn’t surprised at the scene waiting for them, but her pace faltered when she realized that the police and a crowd of neighbors were in front of Denise’s house. 

“Mulder,” she whispered, pulling him to a stop. “I was here yesterday. For Mahjong. This is Denise’s house.”

Mulder let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her back, pulling her close for comfort, as Pierre, the supportive husband, but also as Mulder, her partner at the FBI and in life, who was aware that she had gotten to know the woman who lived in that house and may now be missing or worse. 

“Let’s see what we can find out,” he said as they walked towards the crowd. 

Three police cars and an ambulance lined both sides of the street in front Denise’s property. The neighbors, including Maureen, Madeline, and Beth, stood in groups on the sidewalk talking quietly with looks of concern and fear on their faces. There was a hushed murmur of many conversations at once as the community members watched the police marking off the property with bright yellow caution tape. 

“Marie!” Beth called, waving her arm frantically to call her over. As she and Mulder walked across the lawn, Scully took a breath and remembered who she was and how she should behave. 

“Beth,” she said, approaching the group of women and taking Beth’s hand. She tried her best to keep her expression confused and worried while her brain worked at hyper speed, trying to observe everything she could— the demeanor of the people on the sidewalk, the appearance of the house and the lawn, the work of the police officers coming and going. She noticed Keith alone off to one side, nervously wringing his hands. 

“What happened?” Scully asked, sounding shocked. “Why are the police here?”

“We’re not sure,” Beth said, “but Denise didn’t come to spin class this morning and she wasn’t answering her phone. Maureen and I came to check on her and found the front door open. The house is a mess.” 

At that, Maureen started to cry, leaning into Beth to help keep her upright. Beth wrapped her arm around her friend while maintaining a firm grip on Scully’s hand.

On their other side, Madeline rolled her eyes. “Really Maureen, stop crying,” she said. “The house isn’t that much messier than Denise always kept it. She’s probably fine.”

Mulder lightly tapped Scully’s waist with the back of his fingers. When she looked at him, he mouthed the word “kept.” Past tense. Scully raised an eyebrow, earning a small nod. 

“Marie,” he said. “Will you be okay? I thought I would go talk to one of the police officers. See if they know what happened. That one looks like he might be willing to talk.”

Scully followed his gaze to the officer standing by the front door. He was staring straight at them with a knowing look in his eye. 

“Okay,” she said, with more than a small suspicion that the officer knew who they were. “But don’t bother them too much, Poopyhead. They look busy.”

Beth chuckled at Scully’s pet name, but she hoped that Mulder would hear it and catch her warning to stay undercover until he was certain the officer could be trusted. Mulder smiled and nodded before leaning in to place a kiss on her cheek, close to her ear before whispering, “Find a reason to check up on me.”

As Mulder walked away, Scully turned to look at Keith. “That poor man,” she said to the woman. “Keith is it? He looks like a nervous wreck.”

“That man is always a nervous wreck,” Madeline snapped in return, looking far more annoyed than worried about her friend’s well being.

“Well I’m going to go see if he’s ok,” Scully said. “He’s all alone.”

“Would you like me to come with you?” Beth asked. Her sweetness wrapped around her like a cloud and Scully made up her mind that there was no way Beth could be involved in any of this.

“No, no,” she said, needing to convince them to let her go alone so she could question Keith the best she could. “I’ll be fine. I just want to make sure he’s alright.” 

As she walked towards Keith, Scully saw Mulder talking to the young officer in a local police department uniform. He was playing the role of Pierre well. His pastel purple polo shirt was creased and tucked into his khaki pants and his loafers were perfectly shiny. He stood with his hands on his hips with a swagger that said, “I am retired and shouldn’t have to be dealing with such commotion in my community.”

Scully smiled, never having imagined a future like that for him, and yet, here they were. 

“I knew this would happen,” she heard Keith say before he was aware of her. Surprise and guilt flashed across his face. “Mrs. Curry. Hi.”

“Hi Keith,” she said, briefly touching his arm. “You look terrible. Do you know what happened?”

“I… I don’t,” he stuttered. “They just…”

“Is someone hurt? Sick?” Scully asked, trying to get more information. “I saw Denise yesterday. She was fine.”

“No… No,” he said. “Not sick. They… I didn’t want this to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“Keith,” she said cautiously. “Didn’t want what to happen?”

His gaze kept venturing towards the women on the sidewalk, particularly to Madeline, who paid him no mind.

“I don’t know,” Keith mumbled. “I… I don’t know.” 

“Are you going to be ok?” Scully asked, earning a somewhat frantic nod from Keith. “OK. Just breathe. It’s going to be ok, but I better go check in with my husband before he drives those poor officers crazy.”

Keith chuckled a little, but continued to wring his hands. He knew something about what was happening, but as Scully crossed the lawn to join Mulder, she couldn’t decide exactly how much.

“Agent Scully,” the officer said, in a hushed voice. Relieved to hear her name from someone other than Mulder, Scully smiled in response, as she hoped Marie would do. 

“This is Agent Tanner,” Mulder told her quietly. “He’s actually with the FBI field office and has been read in on our assignment.”

“What happened here, Agent Tanner?” she asked.

“Denise and John Griffin went missing from their home, from what we can tell, at approximately 9:00 last night. None of the people we have spoken to so far have any information about their whereabouts, but the condition of the house makes this a possible missing persons case and we suspect foul play.”

“And what is the condition of the house?” she asked, wishing they could go inside and investigate themselves. 

“To be frank, It’s as if a tornado blew through,” Agent Tanner said. “There is some toppled furniture, papers, mail and clothes on the floor and surfaces. A broken window.”

“Any blood or fingerprints?” she asked. 

“Not yet, but we are still looking.”

A flash of orange caught Scully’s attention. She let out a quick hiss to warn the men to be quiet just as her least favorite Bella Terra resident came to join them. 

“Officer,” the orange body builder said, reaching his hand out for a shake. He was wearing a bright yellow muscle shirt, and shorts that were far too tight. His small dog, on its pink, jeweled leash sat obediently at his feet. “The name is Gene. I live two doors down. Could you tell me what is all this commotion about?”

Scully could feel Mulder’s eyes on her as his name registered in his head. At their brunch with the women from the water aerobics class, Beth had mentioned that Madeline and Gene had lived there the longest. The tan man, she realized in surprise, was married to Madeline.

“We aren’t exactly sure, sir,” Agent Tanner told him. “But as far as we can tell, no one in the community is in any danger.”

Gene put his hand on Scully’s lower back, in a spot that was typically reserved for one man, and one man alone. Mulder bent to the side, and in a nearly comical gesture, looked behind Scully at the offending hand in his spot.

Gene fixed his eyes on Scully, and said, “I would hate to see our members in any sort of danger.”

While on the surface, it would have appeared to be a concerned sentiment, every word out of Gene’s mouth dripped with suggestiveness and seduction, proving that it wasn’t concern he had for Scully, but instead blatant lust. Scully could feel Mulder’s anger rising.

“Is that your wife?” Mulder asked through gritted teeth, pointing to the crowd of women where Madeline was staring daggers at not just Gene, but Scully as well. “It looks like she might want you to come back over there.”

“Stay safe,” Gene said to Scully, with a wink, before walking away in what could best be described as a saunter. Madeline’s eyes remained firmly focused on Scully. When Gene finally reached his wife, she immediately began to berate him as they turned to walk away, though he didn’t seem to care in the slightest. 

“God, I hate that guy,” Scully said, noticing that Keith was watching the couple intently as they left the crowd of onlookers. 

“Madeline’s husband,” Mulder said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

“If looks could kill,” Scully mumbled, a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Sorry about that, Agent Tanner,” Mulder said. “You know the address of the house we are staying in, correct?” 

“Yes,” the agent said. “We have been instructed to collect any evidence found at the scene and have it discreetly delivered to you as soon as possible. It will probably come from a delivery person of some sort.”

“See if he can bring us a pizza while he’s at it,” Mulder said, jovially clapping the man on the shoulder, turning back into Pierre, a curious retiree just looking for a few answers. 

“Agent Tanner,” Scully added, tipping her head in the direction of Keith, who continued to stare at Madeline and Gene. “I think you are going to want to talk to the property manager again. He knows something.” 

The agent nodded his head and made a note in a small notebook he had at his hip. 

“Let’s let these nice people do their work, Marie,” Mulder said in a slightly louder voice for the benefit of anyone in earshot, before putting his hand on her back and leading them away from the house. 

Beth hurried towards them as they walked back across the lawn. 

“What did they say?” she asked with a frantic note in her voice. “Do they know where Denise is?”

“They don’t know,” Mulder said, placing a calming hand on her shoulder. “But everyone is safe, and I’m sure we will find out something soon.” 

~~~~

Madeline and Gene’s House  
Bella Terra

She threw the door open when they got back to their house and marched into the kitchen, not waiting for Gene, but knowing that he would follow her at his own pace. Madeline could feel her blood boiling. The room was spinning and her emotions felt like a hurricane, spiraling inside her without a way out. 

She had seen the way he had looked at that new resident. Marie. She hadn’t liked her from the moment she met her. She was too perfect. Too pretty. And she was hiding something. She didn’t look like the type of woman who would retire to a place like Bella Terra. She looked more like she should be commanding a courtroom or running a fortune 500 company. 

And her husband. They were an odd pair. She was so serious and he… he was a buffoon. Splashing around like a child in the pool. Touching his wife every chance he got. How they had ever found each other, let alone stayed together to the point of retirement, amazed her. 

She and Gene were perfectly suited for each other. They both enjoyed the finer things in life— lobster tails, expensive wine, trips to Europe. They used to golf together, before Gene’s golfer’s elbow became too painful. They watched the same TV shows and enjoyed the same music.

But he would rather look at women like that Marie than pay her any attention. He showered every woman he came across with praise, so long as it wasn’t her.

Kiko ran into the kitchen and went right to her water dish, lapping and splashing loudly. Gene followed her into the room, slowly and self assuredly.

“Just once, could you try not to embarrass me in front of the entire community,” she hissed at him as he walked to the fridge and removed a carton of milk. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Must you flirt with every woman in this god forsaken place?” she shrieked, the spiral of emotion, swirling and slamming against her from inside. What did they have that she didn’t?

“You know it means nothing,” he said with a dismissive tone and took a large sip from his glass of milk. “I just appreciate beautiful things.”

“And what about me?” Madeline asked, feeling her old insecurities rise. She was the lanky teenager with a foreign accent and clothing from another culture. She was the out-of-step college student that the boys ignored. She was the daughter that her parents were never proud of, and the wife who was taken for granted. “Why am I never one of those beautiful things?”

Her anger had dissipated under the crushing weight of her sadness and longing. 

“Oh, Madeline, stop,” Gene said, rinsing his glass in the sink as she watched him carefully, willing him to take her in his arms and settle her fears. “I’m not doing this with you.”

He walked out of the room. 

She needed to get his attention back on her.

~~~~

The Curry House  
Bella Terra

The evidence came later in the day via DHL, much to Mulder’s chagrin, but thankfully he was able to convince Scully to order the pizza he had been craving. 

She was different lately. Towards the end of their relationship and during the beginning of their return to the X-files, she had been more regimented and buttoned up than he had seen her in a long time. There were moments of levity from time to time while they were on cases, but she remained mostly professional, in attitude and appearance, and had maintained the healthiest diet she could manage while they were on the road. 

In their partnership she had always been one to force salads on him, while he ignored her theft of his French fries, but he had always known that a happy Scully was more willing to bend the rules. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched her take a second slice of buffalo chicken pizza. 

“John and Denise Griffin. Residents of Bella Terra for four years and seven months. Now officially missing persons. At the scene, investigators found a broken tea cup, picture frames thrown off the walls, papers scattered around the house,” she said while taking bites and chewing her pizza. There was a drip of buffalo sauce just below her lip. Mulder reached across the kitchen table and wiped it with his thumb before considering the intimacy of his gesture. 

Scully held his gaze with her own for just a moment before giving him a slight smile and returning to her notes. “Evidence found included grass clippings, dog hair, dust and wood chips throughout the entry, living room and kitchen,” she said. “The second bedroom also sustained damage with overturned furniture, a broken flat screen television and knicks and scratches to the walls. All other rooms were in pristine condition with no unusual evidence found.”

“The killer’s getting sloppy, Scully,” Mulder said. He had suspected wind from the small amounts of debris he found at the first house, and his theory felt more spot on as he looked at the pictures the investigators had sent. “I agree with Agent Tanner. It looks like a tornado blew through this house.”

“But only part of it.”

She was right. The front rooms of the house and the second bedroom had taken the brunt of whatever had happened, while the other rooms had come through completely unscathed. 

“Pretty peculiar weather event,” he said, peering at the clump of evidence sealed in a small ziplock bag. “Did the Griffins own a dog?”

Scully flipped through the file in her hand. “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” she said. 

Mulder hummed in response. 

“Mulder, what happened to these people?” she asked, putting the file down. “They disappeared without a trace, no blood, no evidence of a struggle, but their house, certain rooms in their house, look like they have sustained hurricane force winds. Is any of this making sense to you?”

“I still think it’s wind, Scully.”

“Mulder, it looks like wind, but wind doesn’t pick and choose what rooms it blows through,” she said. “Particularly in a house with all the windows not only closed, but locked.” 

Mulder nodded and flipped through the pictures again. 

“Wind also does not scoop people up without a trace. If it were a tornado, the outside of the house would have been damaged. There would have likely been other homes that were damaged. And the Griffins, or at the very least their bodies, would have been found,” she said as he continued to look at the evidence. “Mulder.”

“I hear you, Scully,” he said looking up. For a second she was the young agent, trying desperately to cling to science while she followed him from one unexplained case to the next. All these years and some things stay the same. “I didn’t say it was a tornado. I said it was wind.”

“Wind.”

“Yes,” he said, getting up, walking to the fridge and grabbing two beers. Maybe it was his “retirement” but he was starting to get used to afternoon drinking. “I think someone is directing the wind. Sucking it through the house.”

“Are you saying this is another Holman Hardt?”

Mulder chuckled. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “And I thought you didn’t believe that Holeman was controlling the weather.”

Scully just shook her head and threw her arms in the air, exasperated and without an answer. Over the years she had become more willing to believe the unbelievable, but her internal fight to stay rational rarely allowed her to admit it. 

“It’s not that, Scully. I think someone is using the wind in some way to attack people. Punish them, maybe,” he said, picking at the label on his bottle. “Keith seemed very interested in the crime scene today, wouldn’t you say?”

“Mulder, he is responsible for the community and every house and resident within it,” she said before taking a sip of her beer. “It is literally his job to be interested in a crime that happened on the property. And besides, I think he may have been more interested in Madeline than what happened inside that house.”

“I noticed that too.”

“Unrequited love,” Scully said in a tone that felt like it held more weight than just the case they were discussing. 

“Can’t imagine what that would be like.”

~~~~

How quickly they had fallen back into their nighttime routine. Scully wondered why he hadn’t offered to sleep in the guest room on their first night in this house, or why he hadn’t taken his usual place on the couch. More concerningly, why hadn’t she requested it? 

She sighed, wondering if at this point she would rather kiss Skinner or shoot him for putting her in this situation. If she allowed herself to be honest with her feelings, she was enjoying herself. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen once they got back to DC, but a little flicker of excitement grew inside her, telling her maybe things were going to be okay. 

Mulder’s snore snapped her out of her thoughts. He was more able to settle when she was around, and had fallen asleep while she was washing off her face mask. She smiled and resigned herself, choosing to live in the moment and worry about what this all meant after they closed this case. 

Scully slid under the covers and wrapped her small body around Mulder’s back, the big spoon to his little one. 

~~~~

A gust of wind startled Scully from her sleep. At some point they had rolled over, and Mulder was now holding her close against his chest. In his sleep, he pulled her in tighter and buried his nose in her hair. She sighed and tried to calm her rapidly beating heart. 

Mulder slept on, but as the minutes passed, she realized there was no use for her. She was awake. 

The wind kept howling outside the house and as Scully slid out of bed to go make herself some tea, she hoped they wouldn’t find themselves in another Florida hurricane. The wind sounded loud enough to be a tropical storm at the very least. 

The chandelier in the dining room was shaking and the windows sounded like they were being sucked in and out in the frames. 

“So much for retiring to Florida,” Scully mumbled to herself, walking to a window in the front of the house to check the weather. 

She pulled back the curtain, expecting to see rain and palm trees blowing from side to side. Instead she found Madeline standing dead center on their front lawn, staring at her unflinchingly, while leaves and debris flew all around her. 

“Mulder?” Scully called without breaking eye contact from the woman in the yard. Her gun was upstairs. She hoped Mulder would hear her and come downstairs armed. 

The wind picked up, becoming somehow stronger than it had been before, sounding like a freight train rolling through. She could hear the dishes in the China cabinet shaking as a picture fell from the wall behind her. The window in front of her looked like it was pulsing, and just as she stepped back, the glass shattered, throwing shards into her hands as she threw them up to protect her face. 

“Mulder!” 

The wind blew through the house, upending the case notes they had left on the table, and toppling the garbage can, its contents swirling around the floor. 

“Scully!” Mulder yelled, running down the stairs with his gun in hand. “What the hell—”

“It’s Madeline!” she yelled, though she could barely hear her own voice over the wind. “She’s outside!”

Another window shattered and the wind started to change, pulling towards the front of the house rather than swirling throughout. The papers that had been scattered through the room flew out through the broken panes, slicing at Mulder’s arms as he ran towards the front door. 

Scully could feel it, and started to panic. 

“Mulder!” she yelled, grabbing onto the window frame. “It’s pulling me! It’s pulling me out!”

She could see the fear in his eyes as he grasped the door knob. The door opened inward and no matter how hard he pulled, Mulder couldn’t get it to budge. 

“Scully!”

“Mulder, help!” 

She was barely able to keep her feet on the ground and could feel the blood seeping from her hands where they grabbed hold of the glass covered window frame. 

Using all his strength, Mulder trudged his way towards her and wrapped his arm protectively around her waist. His gun was aimed out the window. 

“Madeline!” he yelled, though Scully didn’t think she could hear him. She seemed to be in some sort of trance, unaware of what was happening around her. Her hair was wild and her lips were in a pucker, with all the air in the house being pulled towards her. 

Scully could feel herself losing her hold, and a scream ripped from her that was so visceral it took her a moment to realize that it was her own. 

Mulder grabbed her tighter as his gun flew from his hand. “Madeline!” he screamed. “Madeline stop!”

Scully continued to scream as wind whipped around her face. She was now halfway out the window and could feel Mulder’s fingers losing their grip on her body. 

“Scully! I can’t—” Mulder yelled. “Scully!”

His hand lost its grip and she could feel herself lifting the rest of the way off the ground, pulled towards the yard, with the glass shards from the window ripping at her pajamas. 

“Mulder!”

“Scully!”

“Madeline!” a sudden voice calls from outside. “Madeline! You have to stop!”

The wind pulsed for a moment in response to Keith’s words, but continued to pull towards Madeline.

Mulder had grabbed the back of Scully’s shirt, desperate to keep a hold on her as she fought to maintain her grip, now on the outside of the house just beyond the window frame. 

“He doesn’t love you!” Keith yelled, causing Madeline to shift her gaze, while continuing to suck the air and Scully towards her. 

“He doesn’t love you!” he yelled again, walking towards her and gripping her arm with his hand. “But I do.”

Madeline turned to look at him fully and Scully could feel the wind let up enough to be able to reach out and grasp Mulder’s hand with her own. He squeezed it tightly, and the pain from the glass cuts feeling like life itself. 

Keith’s voice was softer as he looked at Madeline. Her lips were in a tight line, but the wind hadn’t settled. 

“This needs to stop,” Keith said. “It’s not this woman’s fault. It wasn’t any of their faults.”

The wind was dying down. Mulder was able to pull Scully back into the house, wrapping her tightly in his arms. 

Keith placed a hand on Madeline’s face, and barely loud enough for Mulder and Scully to hear said, “I love you.”

Madeline crumpled to the ground and began to sob, the wind falling still around her. 

Mulder studied Scully’s expression and rubbed his thumb across her cheek, taking in the bloody scratches that covered her face. 

“Are you okay?”

Her throat was raw and she could feel the shock setting in, so she just nodded in response. 

“I’m going to…” he said, making sure she was alright. She nodded, understanding, forcing herself to release him.

Mulder walked across the lawn to find Madeline slumped on the grass, wrapped in Keith’s arms as they both cried.


	7. Chapter 7

Case # X-7261108-08SD  
Agent of Record: Special Agent Fox Mulder

Madeline Hunter was taken into custody shortly after midnight Sunday morning. Upon her arrest, she admitted to being responsible for the disappearances of the Tobins, Perrys, Richardsons, Griffins, and two other couples who had gone missing from Bella Terra the previous year. While she would not reveal how exactly she had caused the disappearances, my belief is that she possessed the ability to control wind, allowing her to suck the souls, and possibly bodies of her victims, into herself, thereby consuming them completely. This theory has not been confirmed or proven. 

Agent Scully sustained minor cuts and scratches to her face, and required stitches on her left hand from an injury caused by a broken window pane. She is not of the same belief about Madeline’s abilities, but does agree that Madeline was present and unharmed during a wind storm that was focused on Agent Scully and, by association, myself.

Through speaking with Madeline and her husband Gene Hunter, we have concluded that the attacks were fueled by jealousy brought on by Gene’s advances toward the women in the Bella Terra community. Gene remains adamant that he had no knowledge of his wife’s behavior.

Madeline’s friends have all been interviewed and while all had at times felt intimidated by Madeline, none had any knowledge of her involvement in the missing residents.

Keith Donovan, who was able to disrupt the attack on Agent Scully, is being held as a possible accomplice. His involvement appears to be limited to an awareness that Madeline was responsible in some way in the disappearances of the Bella Terra residents. Keith also admits to arranging the disposal of possessions and the cleaning of the victims’ homes after their disappearances. He pledges to support and stand by Madeline as her case goes to trial.

The bodies of the missing couples have not been found.


End file.
